Saturday, 30 June 2012

It’s a Wonderful Life is an aspiring
movie examined the worth of a single
man’s life, it’s dark and bright, full of passion, despair and joy. It's a
little too sweet sometimes - but it has moments that can surprise you even
after you’ve seen it dozens of times you watch it.

The stories evolve around George Bailey,
an ordinary kind of fella who thinks he's never accomplished anything in life. His
dreams of becoming a famous architect, of traveling the world and living
adventurously, have not been fulfilled. Instead, he feels trapped in a humdrum
job in a small town. His fate binds him to Bedford Falls and the humdrum
business of making loans so working people can afford to buy modest houses. And
when faced with a crisis in which he feels he has failed everyone, he breaks
under the strain and flees to the bridge in the chilling snow.

George who was going to commit
suicide by jumping off a bridge, but was stopped when someone happened by and
struck up a conversation with him.The
mysterious person eventually learns that George wishes he’d never been born and
grants George his wish.

The mysterious ma takes him back through
his life to show to him what his community would be like without him. George
soon discovers that no one he knows recognizes him and that many of the people
he’d known were worse off in their lives because he had never existed. Most prominent among these was his little
brother who had drowned because he had not been there to save him.

The mysterious man reveal to be
an angel to shows how George Bailey's loyalty to the job at the building and
loan office has saved families and homes, how his little kindnesses have
changed the lives of others, and how the ripples of his action will spread
through helping make world a better place. George eventually gets the angel to change
everything back to the way it was and is now glad to be alive.

After George prays in tears for the opportunity to live again, he awakes
back in reality among his loved ones. Even though he is still on the
brink of personal disaster, George finally comes to grips with the
beauty of his life and he chooses to welcome his destiny, whatever it
might be. In the end, it’s not an angel who saves George
Bailey, but his family and friends.

It is amazing to think how our
ordinary everyday efforts sometimes touch others.

This movie was based
on a “Christmas Card” Short Story by Philip Van Doren Stern, which was
originally sent out to around 200 of Stern’s friends and family in December of
1943.

The short story was inspired by a dream Stern had one night in the 1930s. Stern,
already an accomplished author at this point, albeit a historical author, then
proceeded to write the 4,000 word short story Stern initially sought to find a
publisher for his short, 21 page story, but failed in this endeavour, so
decided to make a “Christmas Card” style gift out of it and printed 200 copies
which he sent out to friends and family in December of 1943.

This ended up being a gift that
gave back, as the work eventually found its way into the hands of producer subsequently
adapted the story further and ultimately made it into it’s a Wonderful Life,
which debuted in 1946.

What make it more Interesting, the character of George Bailey was actually based
partly on the founder of Bank of America. When A.P. Giannini join the Columbus
Savings & Loan Society, which was a small bank in North Beach, California.
He found that almost nobody at the Savings & Loan, nor other banks, were
willing to give loans to anyone but the rich or those owning businesses.

At first, Giannini attempted to
convince the other directors at the Savings & Loan to start lending to
working class citizens, to give them home and auto loans, among other
things. He felt that working class
citizens, though lacking in assets to guarantee the loan against, were
generally honest and would pay back their loans when they could. Further, by loaning them money, it would
allow working class citizens to better themselves in ways they would not have
been able to do without the money lent to them, such as being able to buy a
home or to start a new business. He was
never able to convince the other directors to begin lending to the working
class. So he raised funds to start his
own bank, the Bank of Italy, which later became the Bank of America.

He then made a practice of not
offering loans based on how much money or equity a person had, but based
primarily on how he judged their character. By the middle of the 1920s, it had
become the third largest bank in the United States. Much like the fictitious George
Bailey, Giannini kept little for himself through all this.

In is amazing both Stern & Giannini shows the smallest contributions in it own way end up being the most significant ones.

If you watch this movie and, somehow, don’t warm to it then at least
take away one of the important lessons it contains: “No man is a failure
who has friends”. Keep that in mind and perhaps you can strive to amass
the riches that George Bailey has in his life, even when he doesn’t
realise it.

Saturday, 23 June 2012

Life can sometimes feel like a
jigsaw puzzle. Out of that, are some
interesting life strategies that can apply to how you can put your life back together.

So solve the puzzle we need to see the bigger picture,
sometimes we just have to step back...

We see things more clearly
when we step back and reflect. Often we want a quick decision. We want to solve
a problem before we truly understand what the problem is. A problem not well
defined may be half solved.

Unfortunately, we jump to
conclusions and have to back track. We retract what we said or did and then
have to clean up the mess. Never make a big decision in the middle of a crisis
unless you absolutely have to. Reflecting on things doesn't take away from
being decisive. It makes you a person of reason and judgment.

You are not alone. It happens
to the best of us. We're too caught up in the details to notice the bigger
picture, to realize the potential of something.

Even for those of us who do
this for a living -- look at the bigger picture, find focus and clarity, communicate
the main message to others -- when it comes to our own problem, some outside
perspective is always welcome, and sometimes necessary.

Sometimes it's useful to just
step away for a bit, to focus on something else. You won't forget everything
you know, but you might shake off the curse of the expert; just by doing things
that you are not a pro at. And by speaking with people who are not experts at
what you do.

And while feedback and advice
from friends and family is useful in many cases, it isn't always enough.
Sometimes you need to talk to someone who isn't trying to please you, or to be
helpful; someone who is standing far enough away from you to see the big
picture -- all of it.

This kind of feedback is
difficult to come by among your close friends, but that's exactly the kind that
helps most. Sometimes it can be worth to reach out and look for help outside
your usual circle. And just listen, with an open mind. And reflect, brainstorm.
Let yourself be excited by the possibilities. Don't start with the barriers
raised, don't reject everything from the start because you think you can't
afford it, or because it would take too long, or because that's just not the
way you normally do it.

It's ok to fantasize a bit.
Ideas and thoughts that sound crazy at first just might have some potential.
Let them form in your mind, for now. They just might open some new horizons,
and let you see a much bigger picture than you ever thought possible.

Saturday, 16 June 2012

You must be thinking "Does
this fella have to analyse every movie in his perspective?" Well,
Hollywood has always been my source of my inspiration and will always continue
to be. Each movie, I feel, has a
hidden message and I always try to decipher it and apply it to my life... It
may sound strange but that's the way it works for me.

Ever watched the movie Click
starring Adam Sandler? It’s about an architect who is an absolute workaholic
who is only focused on getting further in his career. He finds a universal
remote that allows him to fast-forward, pause, and rewind through his life.

He could press 'pause' in
certain moments he thought he wanted to last a little longer and 'fast forward'
the unpleasant ones. As the story goes, Morty warned Michael to use the remote
wisely and not to let it rule his life.

He uses the remote to
fast-forward through his life and stop after he gets huge promotions at his job
and ultimately ends up becoming super successful and rich but he
isn’t happy.

His family has forgotten about
him, he becomes ill, and everything that he’s ever loved and cared about ended
up resenting him for never being there for them. He’s a wreck and wishes that
he could rewind everything and go back to the beginning before he decided to
speed through his life. But he can’t.

He thought that skipping
through all the moments with his family and the hard work that it takes to
become successful was the answer to all his problems, but he realized that is
wasn’t.

So here’s the question for us:
If we had the chance – if we had a universal remote that allowed us to
fast-forward through our life – would we use it to get us to the point where we
“have made it?”

Would we use the remote to bring
us to “success” and skip the entire journey as a we growing our career all the way to we are older, rich, influential, and successful?

How
often do we "fast forward" in our lives, living on autopilot? How
often are we looking forward to the future to start living? How often do we
miss the present moment because we're caught up in thought? It's easy to justify "tuning out"
for moments here and there, but there is a price.

I was living my life in "fast forward" mode. I was busy pursuing inculcated goals such as getting good results,
earning money and becoming successful. My life was single-mindedly focused on
what would make me rich and successful.

I don’t know about you guys,
but I would never use the universal remote again. I wouldn’t want to skip the journey
to becoming successful. The journey is what makes it fun. The journey is what we
learn from. Being an a life is all about taking the journey, getting up when us
fall, basking in our feats, and feeling special when us change the lives of
others along the way.

There are some bad times which
I would like to "skip" and probably "fast forward". But all
in all I like my life, as imperfect as it may seem, I wouldn't want anything
changed, paused or fast forwarded. It's perfectly playing right now, the way it
is.

So enjoy life. Enjoy every
moment that we have as part of our life journey. Enjoy the people that we meet
and the lessons that us learn. Don’t take any of it for granted. Embrace the
present, work hard, love life, and build our future.

Saturday, 9 June 2012

Here's a theory that I've been kicking around for a while: life is like a
Rubik's cube - sometimes you have to make it worse before you can make
it better.

There is only 1 correct answer
and 43 quintillion wrong ones for Rubik's Cube. God's algorithm is the answer
that solves the puzzle in the least number of moves. One eighth of the world's
population has laid hands on 'The Cube'.

Named after its inventor, Ernö
Rubik, the Rubik’s cube was first invented in 1974. Unlike most toys available
on the market today, Ernö Rubik did not set out to invent a best-selling
puzzle, but instead to solve a complex structural design problem. To teach his architecture students, Rubik developed the cube as a model to understand how blocks
could move independently without falling apart. After twisting the multi-colour
blocks in the model, Rubik realized that returning the model to its original
configuration was not a light task. After a month of trial, error and
incremental victories, Rubik solved his puzzle.

Anyone that’s tried to solve a
Rubik’s cube before knew there are really hard.

The truth is I’m not a genius and
I couldn’t solve a Rubik’s cube on my own, at least not without putting in
ridiculous amount of time that would be a waste to spend. Believe me, when I
was younger I tried to solve one for hours and hours but I never got close.
After solving one side of the cube, I could never fathom how to solve the next
without destroying the first. My brain is just not as geared towards this kind
of special thinking, the algorithms definitely don’t come easy to me.

Eventually I'd get frustrated and give up. At this point, there was
always a part of me that wanted to just remove the stickers (or take the
pieces apart) and replace them so it looked as if I completed the
puzzle, but I knew this would have been an empty victory

But does the fact that I wasn’t
born with this kind of brainpower mean that I should give up on ever solving
one if I really wanted to? Should I just accept my fate, put my Rubik’s cube at
the back of my shelf and never touch it again? Of course not! If there are
resources and willing people out there to teach me how to do something I can’t,
why shouldn’t I take advantage of them?

Through our lives we often point
to our own natural abilities as the reasons for our shortcomings. We make
excuses such as not being smart enough to explain why we can’t accomplish
certain things, and because of these excuses we give up early, and don’t
preserve using every means at our disposal.

The truth is we don’t need
natural talents and abilities to accomplish great things or succeed in our life;
we just need to approach things the right way. We can save ourselves the time
and struggle and pain of trying to solve life’s algorithms by ourselves and
instead learn from others.

I’ll admit there are some areas
of our life where we may want to figure something out for ourselves to have the
deep understanding of it that we may need. If we have the natural ability to do
this, without spending more time on it than it’s worth.

Be efficient with our life,
there’s no reason to struggle and suffer trying to reinvent the wheel when
someone else has already done it for we and can show us how. In life results
tend to be what matter and if learning from others can get us better results in
shorter time there’s no reason not to take advantage of it. Don’t give up on
something that’s too difficult for us, there’s always a way to accomplish what
we want, even if we have to ask someone who’s already gotten it how. Identify
the difficult Rubik’s Cube areas of your life, and learn some algorithms to
master them.

Note: My work is like solving Rubik Cube;You think you're getting close to figuring it out, but then someone
comes along and mixes it up again, and takes some of the stickers off
while they're at it.

Saturday, 2 June 2012

Malaysia’s vision is to
become a developed nation by the year 2020. Central to the fulfilment of this
vision is enhancing the productivity and competitiveness of the country. This
will involve both moving up the value chain into higher value-added industrialization
and services, and developing new areas of competitive advantages. A major
precondition for competitiveness is the availability of skilled workforce
through the provision of education and training.

Recently, Malaysia is preparing
national level education reforms based on tactics pioneered in the US that are
successfully raising student success throughout the school system, from very
early childhood through completion of university or college.

The "cradle to
career" approach of the Strive framework involves, among many measures,
identifying specific interventions such as day care or home visits by social
service workers that best prepare a child to start kindergarten on the right
foot. The students are then helped to meet carefully tracked indicators of
critical progress in, for example, math and reading proficiency along their
educational journey.

Malaysia’s Prime Minister proposed
reforms would help ensure every child enters school well prepared, eliminate
disparities in academic success, and link the community and family supports
available to students—all important steps in the transformation of Malaysia's
economy with greater human capital in science, technology, and innovation.

But despite the Malaysian
government’s concerns, surprisingly, very little is being done to rectify human
capital issues. They are being drawn up on the assumption that skilled workers
are readily available: the areas specified for moving up the value chain are
those dependent on high-quality labour.

On top of all this, there
are complaints that fundamental education reforms have diluted the spirit of
nationalism and the rights of the majority. In 2002, the direction was that science and mathematics be taught in English,
with the medium of instruction otherwise remaining in Bahasa Malaysia. The
reason for this sudden shift was so Malaysians could be better equipped to keep
abreast of developments in science and technology, making Malaysia more
globally competitive.

But now the teaching of
science and mathematics is revert back to Bahasa Malaysia. This is representing yet
another flip-flop in the government’s education policy, is also unprofessional
in its approach towards strengthening the level of English. Again, the resulting implications for the
development of human capital are not good.

Nevertheless, the quality of undergraduates remains an issue in Malaysia, since the students find it difficult to grasp the English language. Private sector companies in Malaysia continue to complain about
graduates’ communication skills in general, and English skills in
particular.

Poor English standards may affect Malaysia’s international
competitiveness, saying that multinational companies may struggle to
find graduates with good English. Our generation will have to face international standard and competition in terms of job market, as part of globalisation.

A labour force that is
educated, creative and innovative is the foundation for economic growth. Unless
education reforms, including the teaching of science and technology in schools,
are approached in a realistic and far-sighted fashion, it may be difficult to
achieve substantial changes.